Showing Everything Else
A Married Queer Dad's 2025 In Photos
This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter about the late blooming queer experience and the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
One of the most prevalent pieces of writing advice I’ve heard throughout my life is “show, don’t tell.”
Don’t just tell that a character was happy or sad or angry, show their facial expressions, what they do with their hands, or how their body shook and trembled. Don’t just tell that it was a beautiful day or a foreboding night, show the breeze whistling in the trees or the indecipherable sounds coming from the dark. Show the light from the bedroom window, show the din from the street, show a character’s hopes and dreams.
I’ve endeavored to show through my writing here how I and others navigate coming out late in life and living our queerness. Much of Sitting Queerly is focused on the deepest questions, the most fraught conversations, the largest fears of the late-blooming experience. For the most part, I think I’ve done a good job, as have the others whose writing I’ve shared or perspectives I’ve transcribed. All has been in service to showing others who are going through a similar journey that they aren’t alone and that there are paths they can follow.
But what about everything else? The day-to-day? The little moments? The medium-sized moments? Saying and acknowledging your queerness is one thing, applying it to how you live your life—what you actually do and say, what you memorialize, what catches your attention—is another thing entirely.
So I’m going to show you what a year for a late-blooming queer dad in a mixed-orientation marriage looks like. Some of these photos will have some obvious connection to queerness with rainbows, protest signs and drag queens. Others will just seem so, well, mundane. And that’s because that’s largely what life is, mundane. The chores, the shifts at work, the family crises, the weekends with kids1 and brief nights out for drinks.
When I began coming out I couldn’t visualize what it would be like to live a queer life. The fact is, it looks like any other kind of life; summer camp with a kid, fun with friends, scary moments, quiet moments. And I think there’s value in showing that.
I’m blocking out my kids’ faces because I’m trying to be more mindful of where I post their likenesses but also, unlike my social media, this is a fully public website where I can’t personally vet everyone who stumbles upon it.